Breaking Free : Film Screenings & Panel Discussion

You are invited for a special event by Godrej India Culture Lab and Godrej’s Diversity & Inclusion team in collaboration with Community Business. The theme for this event is LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender) inclusion – both within and outside the workplace.

You are invited for a special event by Godrej India Culture Lab and Godrej’s Diversity & Inclusion team in collaboration with Community Business. The theme for this event is LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender) inclusion – both within and outside the workplace.

The two-part event will start with a panel discussion on coming out and acceptance of the LGBT community in every area of life. Our high-powered panel includes Radhika Piramal, MD of VIP Industries Ltd., Padma Iyer (whose decision to place a matrimonial listing for her gay son Harrish Iyer in a city newspaper started heated conversations about same-sex marriage in India) and Joe Zachariah (who led the India LGBT Employee Resource Group in his previous firm, Goldman Sachs and is actively involved in bringing in more LGBT inclusive policies in his current firm). The conversation will be moderated by Farah Nathani-Menzies, head of Diversity Inclusion at Godrej Industries Ltd.

The second part of the evening will comprise of the Mumbai premiere of the extraordinary documentary Breaking Free followed by a Q&A with the director of the film, Sridhar Rangayan. Seven years in the making, Breaking Free chronicles the brutality the LGBT community has suffered and continues to suffer from various factions in society. Through personal accounts from victims, activists and lawyers, the film traces both the rise of the LGBT movement and the effect of section 377 on the LGBT community. Sridhar Rangayan is a pioneering LGBT filmmaker and activist in India and the founder of the KASHISH Mumbai International Queer Film Festival – South Asia’s biggest queer film fest. Breaking Free will be preceded by the screening of the short film Time Out – a story of two brothers, who find their relationship tested after one of them is accidentally revealed to be gay. A feature film based on this short movie was released recently across the country.

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